The trouncing of world chess champion Garry Kasparov by IBM's Deep Blue a
decade ago still resonates today both with the public and with IBM, whose
supercomputer business began its meteoric rise to the top spot on the
strength of the victory. IBM controlled 47 percent of the world's top 500
supercomputer sites in the most recent ranking, including four of the top
10. The No. 1 supercomputer in the world is IBM's BlueGene/L machine at
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is capable of performing
280 trillion calculations per second. "For a computer to defeat the world
champion really says something about where computers are going," notes
former IBM researcher Murray Campbell, one of Deep Blue's creators. Deep
Blue's hardware component was 32 microprocessors and 512 specialized chess
chips, while its software was refined to look for and assess potential
moves at a frequency of 200 million chess positions per second. Another
IBM team member, one-time U.S. chess champion Joel Benjamin, recalls that
Kasparov accused the Deep Blue team of cheating because the machine played
moves that were unprecedented. Even today, the president of the Kasparov
Chess Foundation faults IBM for not providing Kasparov with records of
games so he could study Deep Blue's play, as well as for refusing a
rematch. Other people are concerned that Deep Blue's victory has made
impressionable youth admire computers' abilities too much. "Children need
to learn how to use their own minds and make decisions and not have as much
respect for computers," argues Northern Westchester Chess Club President
Sal Catalfamo.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Tuomas Sandholm has
developed a set of algorithms to help match living kidney donors with
potential recipients. There are more than 71,000 Americans waiting for a
kidney transplant, but only about 17,000 transplants are performed each
year. One of the major problems is that frequently those willing to donate
a kidney to a loved one or a friend are not viable donors. This dilemma
has lead to the creation of four kidney exchange networks where two
donor-patient pairs are matched. Fewer than 200 paired kidney exchange
transplants have been performed so far, but experts say there is the
potential to create a national database of almost 10,000 patient-donor
pairs and perform 2,000 transplants per year. Sandholm said that with that
many people, current versions of software designed to match the pairs run
into problems. One such program can handle all 10,000 pairs, but is
incapable of arranging three-way and four-way exchanges. Another such
program can make multiple group matches, but runs out of memory after
calculating 600 to 900 pairs. The algorithm Sandholm created approaches
the matching problem incrementally, so it is capable of making the optimal
number of matches using all 10,000 pairs, a significant accomplishment
because each donor could match multiple recipients, and a set of 10,000
pairs could generate as many as 1 trillion possible three-way exchanges.
The Carnegie Mellon algorithm, developed by Sandholm along with fellow
professor Avrim Blum and graduate student David Abraham, is being tested by
the Alliance for Paired Donation, a voluntary kidney exchange network based
in Toledo, Ohio. To date, the algorithm has been used for one
two-transplant match in New Jersey, and has identified one potential
four-patient chain and several smaller chains, but final tests on the
patients and donors are still underway. Sandholm has high hopes for the
kidney exchange programs, particularly if the current voluntary networks
can be combined to create a national database, which would increase the
chances of good matches.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Computer scientists attending ACM's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
conference in Montreal on Friday were critical of electronic voting
machines. Former ACM President Barbara Simons participated on a panel with
experts who said Florida made a wise decision to eliminate touch-screen
voting machines. The computer scientists took particular issue with the
fact that many e-voting machines do not have audit trails, which leaves the
voting results open to the possibility of manipulation through a software
bug or by a malicious attacker. They favored an analog solution in the
form of a paper trail. "We are called Luddites," said Simons. "Which I
thought was funny coming from people who don't understand technology."
Florida lawmakers voted to employ optical-scan balloting instead. For more
information regarding ACM's e-voting activities, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacmClick Here to View Full Articleto the top

In an interview, Vernor Vinge, a retired San Diego University professor of
mathematics and computer science and a science fiction writer, outlined
some of his predictions for future technological advancements, including
the idea that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence some
time after 2020. Commenting on his famous 1993 speech "The Coming
Technological Singularity," Vinge said, "It seems plausible that with
technology we can, in the fairly near future, create (or become) creatures
who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension." Vinge
believes that his Singularity is the most likely non-catastrophic outcome
to occur in the next few decades, and is being advanced by the widespread
use of the Internet. When intelligent machining finally arrives, it will
be far less visible than technology today, as most of the machining will
operate within the network and in processors built into the ordinary
machines of our everyday life. Vinge also agreed with Stephen Hawkins 2001
argument that genetic enhancement of humans is a viable and necessary
response to compete with intelligent machines. "In the long run I don't
think organic biology can keep up with hardware," Vinge says. "On the
other hand, organic biology is robust in different ways than machine
hardware. The survival of life is best served by preserving and enhancing
both strategies."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

The inaugural Cluster Challenge at SC07 will pit teams of undergraduate
students against one another in a real-time competition of designing and
running open source simulations to solve real-world computational problems.
The event will give the top international conference on high performance
computing, networking, and storage an opportunity to showcase the benefits
of clusters, the fast growing segment that offers considerable
computational power, runs a range of scientific applications, and works for
intimate as well as demonstrative environments. Teams must be comprised of
no more than six students, have a supervisor from their school, and have a
vendor sponsor to provide equipment and funds for travel. The teams will
be called on to show off their cluster piloting skills before thousands of
conference attendees. The last day to submit entries at the SC07 Web site
for the competition is July 31, 2007. ACM and the IEEE Computer Society
sponsor SC07, which is scheduled for Nov. 10-17 in Reno, Nev. For more
information about SC07, visit
http://sc07.supercomputing.org/Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Military robots have been deployed on an unprecedented scale in Iraq and
Afghanistan as a test of their effectiveness in reducing human casualties
and enhancing situational awareness. Ground-based and airborne
reconnaissance, explosives detection and removal, and even elimination of
enemy targets are some of the applications these robots are being used for,
and operators are forming emotional bonds with the machines. Robots are
awarded decorations and promotions, honored as heroes upon completion of
missions, and ascribed personalities by those who operate and work with
them. MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory director
Rodney Brooks says humans' ability to instantly recognize when an entity
exhibits life-like behavior may be a more significant factor than autonomy
when it comes to establishing connections with non-biological objects, and
robots at MIT and elsewhere are programmed with emotion-like expressions or
body language to create sympathy. Yet humans also have surprisingly close
relationships with battle bots, which are not designed with emotional cues.
In fact, the test of a crawling robot that blows up land mines and keeps
functioning until it is too damaged to perform was terminated by a military
officer who, disturbed by the pathetic sight of the increasingly crippled
machine soldiering on, considered the exercise to be inhumane. "We're
programmed biologically to respond to certain sorts of things," Brooks
notes.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

ACM's SIGGRAPH 2007, to be held from August 5-9 in San Diego, Calif., will
draw an estimated 25,000 computer graphics and interactive technology
professionals from six continents for a technical and creative convention
focusing on research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity,
education, and the Internet. A major attraction at the convention will be
the SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies program, which will feature
creative, innovative technologies and applications being discovered in
fields such as displays, robotics, input devices, interaction techniques,
computer vision, wearable computing, bio-technology, collaborative
environments, design, and many more. Event organizers received 75
submissions from six countries for the Emerging Technologies program. Of
the 23 technologies accepted, more than seven include display technologies,
and five feature haptic technologies that attendees can interact with. One
of the featured technologies is the String Walker, a locomotion interface
that uses eight strings actuated by a motor-pulley on a turntable that
allows a user to walk but maintain their positions while exploring a
virtual environment. Another is the Gravity Grabber, a haptic interaction
device that creates the sensation of weight when holding a virtual object
by stimulating finger-pad deformation. For more information about SIGGRAPH
2007, visit
http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers have developed a
way to make optoelectronic devices that use both light and electricity to
process information and communicate using a more efficient technique called
"energy harvesting." The researchers say their silicon-based
optoelectronic devices could revolutionize computing and telecommunications
by increasing the speed at which information can be fed into a system and
increasing the amount of data that can be processed. Current methods
create a problem known as two-photon absorption, which occurs when the
silicon's crystal lattice absorbs two photons simultaneously. The dual
absorption creates more loose electrons, resulting in more photons being
absorbed and causing a chain reaction. Previous efforts to correct the
problem tried to filter out light-absorbing electrons, but created 125
times more waste heat than usable light. Instead, UCLA researchers
harnessed two-photon absorption as a way of generating electricity. By
adding a diode to a silicon-based laser, an electric field was created,
allowing the electrons to be harvested to generate electric power. The
research team has since implemented the photovoltaic effect in other simple
silicon-based devices, an optical modulator and a wavelength converter, and
they believe the approach will work in a full range of optoelectronic
applications, including teraflop computer chips and transcontinental
communication lines.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Software development is frequently seen as a mysterious process where the
requirements are submitted and the product emerges with little management
during the development, but new trends in application lifecycle management
(ALM), called ALM 2.0, involve implementing a more structured and
manageable development cycle. Dynamic applications and services-oriented
architecture are creating more componentized software, requiring stricter
management during design time and runtime. Borland's Marc Brown says his
company is trying to demystify the design process to create a sense of
predictability in software design that mimics other aspects of IT
organization. Forrester Research senior analyst Carey Schwaber says every
year IT teams become more specialized, which improves productivity as
individuals are more skilled at their jobs but also creates isolated groups
of people working on the same project. ALM is intended to coordinate the
work of the designer, the tester, the business analyst, and all other roles
in the process to ensure the software meets business needs. Retail Systems
Alert Group CEO and former Longs Drug Stores CIO Brain Kilcourse says
software development is easily the most unreliable part of the whole value
delivery equation, but that even discussions about ALM 2.0 is a big step in
the right direction. Kilcourse believes that developers need to be able to
come up with one coherent answer to any kind of business question, and no
matter what the toolsets are, they need to be seen from a business
perspective.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

The man who helped invent the Ethernet, Robert "Bob" Metcalfe, was
inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, on the
weekend of May 5, but Metcalfe says that his greatest achievement is yet to
come. Metcalfe, who has spent time as an engineer, an entrepreneur, a
columnist and publisher, and a venture capitalist, says he never expected
the Ethernet to become such a huge success, as he was focused on building
the tools his colleagues needed to network the world's first personal
computers. Metcalfe is also quick to acknowledge the predecessors that
helped in creating the Ethernet, including the ARPAnet packet-switching
network, which gave the Ethernet packet switching, and the Aloha packet
radio network, which gave the Ethernet randomized retransmissions.
However, Metcalfe says that today's Internet is broken. "It lacks three
things," Metcalfe says. "It lacks security, it lacks economics, and it
lacks dedicated bandwidth." Metcalfe notes that the Internet was
originally designed to carry teletype packets but is now being flooded with
full-length feature films. Metcalfe also believes that the best efforts
nature of the Internet misses the true security threats on the Internet,
that no one is inspecting source addresses on packets and packets can
pretend to be from legitimate sources or from nowhere at all.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Bill Moggridge has been an industrial designer for 40 years, and his
accomplishments include what many consider to be the first laptop computer,
the GRiD Compass, which he designed in 1979. In an interview, Moggridge
outlines the steps and processes necessary to creating a good design. At
the beginning of a design, Moggridge says that people and prototypes are
the key because people will dictate the form the design will take, and the
sooner a design team can create a prototype for testing, the better, as it
is likely that they will have missed the mark. Tech companies can better
understand the needs of customers by always examining what people are doing
and why they want certain products. David Liddle, a Xerox PARC alumnus and
user-interface pioneer, says technology goes through three phases of
adoption. The first phase is the enthusiast, who uses the technology
because of a personal interest, despite the fact that it is often difficult
to use. Next the professional adopts the technology, as people are often
willing to learn to use difficult and complex technology if it will improve
productivity. Finally, the technology works its way into the general
consumer world, but it is absolutely essential for the technology to be
enjoyable and easy to learn for it to be successful with consumers.
Moggridge recommends putting together a team that includes a great
engineer, a crazy designer, a good business person, and a good
human-factors scientist or psychologist and try to get them to work
together. There will be significant challenges, but the team will quickly
realize that they can accomplish more and create a far superior product
together than they could as individuals.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Speaking at a Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications
(FITT) careers seminar, Penny Coulter, president of the IT Recruitment
Industry Association, outlined a trend in employer requirements that is
causing a shift away from technical skills to more general soft skills, and
suggested that perhaps women should think more like men and consider
promotions when planning their careers. According to a survey by FITT, 38
percent of survey respondents considered career development as a toping of
interest in 2006, a slight increase from 25 percent in 2005. Coulter said
the lack of women in IT was the result of an inability to attract women to
what Coulter called an outdated reputation of a high technical, antisocial
industry, challenging industry leaders to create and promote a more
attractive work culture and dispel IT's negative stereotypes. "It is
essential that we break away from the traditional nerdy stereotype in IT,"
Coulter said. "Diversity is essential; an organization gets a very narrow
focus if all its employees come from the same background." Coulter said
she believes hiring today is more based on the person and less on the
technical skills as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, and that there are more
positions for people with experience in less technical areas, such as
subject matter experts, business managers, and accountants.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

The SANS Institute will launch a series of assessment and certification
exams this summer that are designed to test programmers' security coding
skills. The program will consist of four examinations, each covering a
different programming language suite: C/C++, Java/J2EE, Perl/PHP, and
.NET/ASP. The tests will measure technical proficiency and expertise at
identifying and fixing common programming errors that create security
vulnerabilities. Anyone interested will be able to test their skills
unofficially by taking the tests online, but those who want to receive the
GIAC Secure Software Programmer certification must take the exams in a
proctored setting. SANS director of research Alan Paller says the original
plan was to provide an assessment tool but a request from the U.S.
Department of Defense convinced the organization to add the certification
option to the program. Cigital CTO and security expert Gary McGraw says he
doubts a multiple-choice test is an effective measure of a programmer's
knowledge of software security, but Paller says the SANS Institute's
underlying objective is to influence computer science educators. "We hope
that, if they see that the security skills of their graduates are going to
be measured by their bosses, they will begin to embed this in all of their
programming courses," Paller says. "We want to make sure that when you
learn to code, you learn it with security baked in."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

The proposed European Institute of Technology (EIT) may open this fall,
but first European Union governments will have to agree on several key
issues as well as provide the 300 million euros needed to fund the first
year of the EIT. EU education commissioner Jan Figel hopes that a
formative bill will be voted on in July. The new EIT model, however, is a
compromise from its original version. Originally, the EIT was modeled
after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was supposed to be a
center of learning based in a single location capable of competing as a
world-class, industry-funded research university. Now, instead of being a
single facility, the EIT is being discussed as a collaborative effort
between current universities and corporations across various EU member
states. Operating budgets have also been drastically cut, as the original
plans called for a 2.4 billion euros budget over the next five years.
Discussions are underway with various European businesses to provide
additional funding, and if successful, up to half of EIT's budget could
come from private sources, giving the organizations 600 million euros to
start with. While the EIT will be a joint effort, the project will have a
base of operations that has yet to be determined. Reportedly, over 60
towns in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have applied.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Hackers have found a new way to turn PCs into "zombies" by infecting them
with malware via their browser, a loophole that thwarts firewalls and
antivirus software. This development reflects a shift in botnet
controllers' infection strategies away from email and toward Web sites. At
a recent conference on botnets, Google security specialist Niels Provos
sounded an alarm on "drive-by" downloads of bots from unsuspicious Web
sites. Provos' team determined that approximately 450,000 analyzed Web
pages launched such downloads of malware, while another 700,000 launched
downloads of software that aroused suspicion. Provos explained that users
would be unaware of the infection unless their browser began to crash or
they were inundated by pop-up advertisements, while Web site owners would
not be alerted to the corruption of their Web pages because such malware is
usually concealed. Also taking place is a change in the nature of botnets
that could make their disablement more difficult, as attackers investigate
the potential of peer-to-peer botnets instead of reliance on an Internet
relay chat server to transmit instructions. Cliff Zou of the University of
Central Florida in Orlando says users could reduce the likelihood of bots
contaminating their PCs while Web surfing by keeping their browsers up to
date with the latest software patches.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law, and Technology at the University of
Ottawa Ian Kerr looks at South Korea's Robotics Ethics Charter to ponder
its relevance. He is skeptical that the charter will ever justify the
media hype, given the subtext. South Korea's intense focus on the
development of robots, especially domestic service robots, is driven by
both economic and social factors. In the first instance, it is to the
country's economic advantage to cultivate an as yet nonexistent global
market as the market for military and industrial robots approaches critical
mass. In the second instance, South Korea wishes to develop domestic
service robots and caregivers to compensate for an anticipated workforce
shortage stemming from the country's extremely low birthrate. "Before we
spend valuable resources commissioning Working Groups to invent ... robotic
laws to avoid inappropriate human-machine bonding, isn't there a logically
prior line of questioning about whether a declining birthrate is truly a
problem and, in any event, whether intelligent service robots are the right
response?" Kerr reasons. He is preparing a book project that examines the
artificial intelligence research community's dream to imbue machines with
the ability to think, and embed ethical and legal protections to ensure
that the machines do not function inappropriately. Kerr contends that
automation's impact on gender stereotypes and social inequality depends on
how robots are designed and employed, noting his concern "about robotic
laws, charters and other sleight-of-hand that have the potential to
misdirect us from the actual domains of ethics and social justice."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Targeted attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in popular document file
formats--including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe PDF--and
execute via hard-to-find shell code are becoming a growing threat,
researchers at IBM's Internet Security Systems division have found.
Experts working with the ISS X-Force group said they have noticed a rapid
rise in the volume and variety of shell-code execution attacks leveled at
their customers over the past year. Customers have been falling for these
attacks in large numbers, the ISS division said, due to the fact that the
threats typically come from spoofed email addresses that appear trustworthy
and reside inside documents that do not have the same security concerns as
Web-based applications. Compounding the problem is the fact that most
anti-virus applications do not look for shell-code attacks, and intrusion
protection systems miss many variants because the types of documents being
used are harder to scan for potential threats. Microsoft and Adobe have
also been finding it difficult to quickly patch the security
vulnerabilities in their products, said X-Force's Kris Lamb. In an effort
to correct this problem, Microsoft is working on improving its
vulnerability testing process by rethinking some of the heuristics tools it
uses to search for potential security vulnerabilities, according to Michael
Howard, the program manager on the company's security team.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top